


Confluence

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Still Supernatural, Asexual Character, Asexual!Castiel, Demons, Friendship/Love, Multi, Platonic Soulmates, ace!cas, asexual!Cas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 03:45:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is a mathematician that suffers from crippling social anxiety; Dean is a mechanic in town with a father that insists upon the existence of demons. When Anna introduces them, they start up a relationship—but what would be a normal (if complicated) romance is interrupted when it becomes apparent that John Winchester might not be as wrong as everyone has always thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confluence

It starts on a cool evening in late September, when the nights are starting to grow colder but the day is still swathed in the warmth of Indian summer. Anna walks across campus with her jacket flapping in the breeze, making for the sprawling building that reads _Muenzinger Mathematics_. 

 Other students are out, too, most dressed as befits a party and heading in the direction of the town; there's couples set for dancing, and groups of girls in bright dresses without coats, and guys in various versions 'badass in leather'. Anna passes a group of undergrads shrieking with laughter, and heads inside. 

 She finds Cas in the TA lounge, anxiously trying to fix his tie in the mirror. He glances towards her as she walks in, groans. "I don't know how you talked me into this. I shouldn't go."  

 "You should." Anna shuts the door behind her, comes up to look over his shoulder. Cas's reflection is pale, and his fingers are fumbling anxiously with the knot of his tie, doing nothing to help its state. "Just relax," she advises. 

 "Anna," Cas says, plaintively—he pulls his tie apart again, tries once again to loop it properly; Anna winces internally as he makes it skewed again, "I really don't think this is a good idea."  

 "You need to relax." She turns him around by the shoulders, pulls his tie apart and re-ties it for him, making sure it's straight before she tucks it into his sweater. "You're not going to be able to enjoy yourself if you keep panicking, you know." 

 Cas gives her a look of pure terror as she tugs his collar straight and hands him his overcoat from where it's draped over a chair. "Anna, I _can't._ " 

 "You are going to breathe," Anna directs, helping with his coat, "and then you're going to go on your blind date, and you're going to have drinks and meet a nice boy, and you're going to have fun. Got it?" 

 Cas makes a strangled noise. Anna grins at him, reassuringly. "You," she says, "are not allowed to spend another whole year cooped up in the mathematics building. It's past time you went out and met someone." 

 "I'm fine in the mathematics building," he retorts. "I like it there. The mathematics building doesn't involve having to know what's on television, or how to dance, or how to talk to people." 

 "Pretend he's a student," Anna advises, then rethinks that. "Actually, don't. Look, just be you." 

 "If I were being me," Cas points out, "I'd be staying in the mathematics building working on my dissertation." 

 "There's more to you than math." Anna pushes him carefully aside, checks her own red-headed reflection in the mirror before heading towards the exit. "I'll be there too, anyway. Worst comes to worst, I'll come to your rescue."  

 " _Anna,_ " Cas moans, and follows her shakily out the door. 

— 

 Anna has to keep Cas from turning back—twice—on their way down to the bar. They walk along the edge of the road, passing the others on their way down as they do; in the road, those of the students that own cars or motorcycles or bikes zip past in bursts of noise.  

 Downtown is alive with the ending of the week. These are the early months of classes, and most students want to get out on weekends even if they've got a workload; and the townies are out, too, drinking and talking and all gravitating slowly towards the bars. 

 Anna leads a rather dazed Cas down to the entrance of the Roadhouse, where loud, tinny music booms out of the doorway. It's then that Cas stops, grabs her by the arm, and says, lowly, "Anna, I think I'm going to throw up."  

 She looks at him with alarm. "Don't do it on me! Breathe in and out, come on. You'll be all right. We'll get you a drink so you can calm down."  

 "I don't think that's such a good idea." Cas staggers aside, sits heavily down on a bench as others pass them by and file into the noisy bar. He's positively green as he looks up at her. "I don't know what to do on a date. Anna, he's going to think I'm pathetic, or insane, or . . ." He gulps down air, rushes on, "or just, _this_." He jerks a hand in the air, indicating himself.  

 "I promise, once we get a pint of alcohol in you, you'll be fine." Anna hopes so, anyway; Cas looks rather like he wants nothing more in the universe than to run away and hide, preferably somewhere with a chalkboard and not another living soul within miles. She takes him by the hands, pulls him up off the bench. "Come on. He's probably waiting for you already. Drinks first, then go find his table."  

 "What do I do? What do I _say?_ " Cas's hands twist the edges of his coat at pocket-level as they start towards the door. 

 "You find the table, you sit down across from him, and you say," Anna pushes him gently up the steps leading to the bar's entrance, " 'hi, my name is Castiel, you can call me Cas. It's nice to meet you.' And then you find something to talk about, and maybe it turns out you like each other. It's easy." 

 " 'Easy'," Cas mutters, miserably. The music bangs louder as they step through the flung-open double doors, squeezing past a group catching some fresh air; a rock ballad singer informs them from the speakers of his love for blue-eyed girls, nearly drowned out by the cacophony of voices and laughter. 

 "We'll talk to Ellen and Jo, first, while we get some drinks in you." Anna navigates through a group of people, pulls Cas through after; she almost has to shout to be heard over the music, now. "You'll like them! Very non-threatening, Ellen and Jo."  

 Cas just shakes his head, mutely. 

 — 

 He meets Ellen and Jo. Castiel is abstractly aware of this fact, just like he's abstractly aware that he's heard the song playing over the speakers before, probably hummed by Anna. 

 He's much more acutely aware, as he stands next to Anna while she orders them drinks, that nausea is twisting his stomach and that's he's scared to death of meeting his date. He runs through how he's going to introduce himself, but it's a futile effort; every attempt to come up with a decent sentence deteriorates rapidly into mindless, throat-constricting anxiety. (When numbers are concerned, he can think with perfect clarity; now, every thought unravels and drifts away like smoke.) 

 Cas snaps back to the real world as Anna pushes a glass into his fingers, orders, "Drink. It'll help." He obeys, upends the glass without another thought. He peers over Anna as she leans forward to talk to Jo at a lower volume, tries to spot who he's supposed to be meeting; _three tables to the left of the door, under the poster of Johnny Cash . . ._  

 It's nearly impossible to see through the throng, but for a moment the crowd parts and Cas catches a glimpse of the poster, looks down—sees who he's supposed to be meeting. 

 He's dressed in a brown leather jacket, and he's leaning rather casually forward on the table, sipping something-or-other; and Castiel finds him more than attractive enough for his anxiety to skyrocket before he's even said a word. In an instant, he makes up his mind, turns towards the door— 

 Anna catches him by the arm without turning, drags him back to the bar. "Oh, no, you don't. Come on, another drink, then we go and introduce you."  

 Cas has run out of new protests. He accepts another drink soundlessly, drains it just like the other; wonders, distantly, if he's going to be able to get his tongue untangled enough to actually say 'hello'. His mind kindly provides him with the dozens of ways this date could go wrong, reminds him that he hasn't been on a date since he was twenty-two (and that the one had ended poorly.) 

 There's another drink, and a few more minutes of agony and focusing on breathing evenly enough not to be ill then and there, and then Anna says, "Ready or not, here we go—" and he's walking over to the table in a daze, fingers clutched around the short loose stick of chalk he's found in his pocket, Anna urging him on. 

 — 

 The man that Anna brings to introduce Dean to is thin, black-haired, and dressed very much like someone who's never had to dress for anything but a university environment (or possibly a glamorous job in accounting) for a day in his life. Dean judges that he's in his mid-twenties, probably; that would match up with Anna's summation of 'grad student, teaches.' 

 The man also posses the air of someone that's ready to bolt, and Dean can't help but feel slightly sorry for him as Anna pushes him forward and says, "Dean, meet Castiel. Castiel, meet Dean." 

 She'd mentioned that her cousin was prone to anxiety, but then, Dean hadn't realized how far the definition of 'anxiety' could be stretched. (That is Anna in a nutshell: tell him just how much is good for him, no more and no less. It's one of the reasons they'd worked rather well as a couple for the year that they'd gone out; there just hadn't been enough such reasons to balance out the ways they _hadn't_ worked, and eventually they'd chosen to be just friends again, instead.) 

 "Hey," he tells the man—Castiel, and damn if that isn't a weird name—offers him a smile. Behind Cas, Anna disappears back into the crowd, leaving them alone. "Anna said you're a 'math major and in dire need of a boyfriend,' " he airquotes. 

 The other man reddens visibly, runs a nervous hand through his already messy hair. "Um," he says. "I don't know about that last part, but I, uh, teach discrete mathematics at the university, and I'm working on writing my thesis on order theory."  

 Dean whistles. "Wow. No wonder you don't get out much, huh?" He grins. "I'm a mechanic. I help run the shop on the far end of town—John's Auto Repair."  

 "I, I noticed." Cas glances down at his hands, makes a faint gesture with his fingers to indicate Dean's jacket. "There's, uh—stains. Motor oil stains, and your hands are coarse enough to show you work with them often." He notices Dean's eyebrows climbing his forehead, says, in a rush, "So, so you're not just an automobile aficionado, and it's a small town . . ." 

 "Yeah," Dean says, amused. "Congratulations, you're already smarter than most of the blind dates Anna's set me up on."  

 Cas looks at him directly for the first time, though he's still clutching the edge of the table like it's the last life raft on a sinking ship. Dean notices that his eyes are a deep blue. "How do you know Anna?" the other man asks, sounding genuinely curious.  

 "We—" It's Dean's turn to shift a touch awkwardly, though after three years it's not as bad as it could be. "We used to date. It didn't work out."  

 "Oh," Cas says. "I remember. Right. She said your father was, uh." Dean watches as the mathematician realizes he's probably strayed into unwelcome territory, takes pity: 

 "—off the deep end? Yeah, you bet." Dean shakes his head, takes a swallow of his beer. "Man's been raving about demons infesting the town since I was six. All of us are just about as tired of it as you'd expect."  

 "Sorry," Cas mumbles. "That doesn't sound very nice."  

 "At this point, so long as he's not actually trying to stab someone while drenching them in 'holy water', I'm happy to let him think what he likes." Dean leans back, draping his arm up over the back of his chair. "What about you? Any annoying relatives in town?" 

 "Just Anna," Cas says, then amends, as quickly as possible, "I mean, not that—not that Anna's an annoying relative. Just that there's no one else." 

 Dean laughs. "No, she isn't, at that. A little scary, and definitely knows what's good for you better than you do, but not annoying."  

 The faintest tinge of amusement flits across the features of the man across from him. "You definitely know her," Cas says. Then, a little hesitantly: "She had to make me come down here tonight." 

 "Bad with crowds?" Dean asks. He makes a note to himself to tell Anna that her definition of 'a little', particularly when applied to 'my cousin has a little anxiety problem' definitely needs reworking.  

 "Yes. And with people," Cas admits, looking away. He's still holding onto the edge of the table, though Dean notes that his knuckles no longer seem to be going white.  

 "I trust I'm not as bad as you expected." Dean grins devilishly. "I only eat babies and burn down government property once a week, tops." 

 This accomplishes its purpose, elicits a laugh. The sheepish smile this brings lights up Cas's entire face; for the first time since he's sat down, the man doesn't look more tensely wound than a spring coil. "No," he agrees, "you aren't."  

 "Good," Dean says. "Then I'm going to get us more drinks, and then we're going to see if I can't make you stop looking like a deer caught in headlights."  

 Dean stands and heads for the bar, and thinks that, yeah, maybe Anna does have a half-way decent taste in guys to set him up with. 

 — 

 Two hours later, when they've said goodbye and Dean has roared off down the street in his sleek black muscle car that he calls 'Baby' and has very possessively informed Cas is a 1967 Chevy Impala, Castiel finds Anna and Jo out behind the bar, sitting on the beyond. 

 "Cas!" Anna waves him over with her beer bottle. "Come join us. Tell us everything." She swings her feet, grinning.  

 Jo, perched beside her, nods. "Yep, everything. Anna's dreadfully interested in what her ex is like and whether he's just become unavailable." She gets a punch for her trouble, cackles. 

 "I don't want him back. I'm perfectly happy being single and available to date," Anna says. "But I do want to know every word. Did you like him?" 

 Castiel climbs up to sit with them, pushing his coat out of the way of his feet. "Yes," he admits, quietly.  

 "You didn't even vomit on him," Anna says, offers him a beer from the package sitting at her feet in congratulation. "Well done."  

 "It was a near thing," he says, waves the bottle away. The feeling of being just slightly drunker than he should be is settling warmly in his bones. Together with leaving the crush of the bar crowd, it's letting him breathe easier, the relief of surviving the night letting him think again (if rather sluggishly). 

 "Are you going to see him again?" Anna nudges him in the side with an elbow. "I want to know if my efforts were worth it. Are you actually going to leave the mathematics building at least one more time this year?"  

 "Next Friday." He hooks his feet around the lower part of the fence, tucks his hands back into his pockets. A hint of anxiety prickles in his stomach, but a smile attempts to steal over his face, anyway. "He said 'next Friday'." 

 "All right!" Anna says; Jo gives a _yes!_ and punches the air. "I told you it was a good idea for you to come." 

 Cas doesn't explain that he spent most of the time feeling as though he was about to have a heart attack, or that the experience has probably given him an early dose of gray hairs, or that by the morning he'll have turned everything he's said over in his head and will feel like an idiot. "You did," he agrees instead. "Thanks, Anna."  

 "Sweet victory," Anna announces, and leans over to give Jo a hug. "Good night, darling. We need to get back to the university before either of us ends up on the ground."  

 They say their final farewells to Jo at the edge of the property surrounding the bar, walk back up the road to the university in relative quiet.  

 Once they reach the university, Anna pauses before heading off to her dormitory, and asks, grinning, "Really, though, tell me. Did he kiss you on the first date?"  

 Castiel—a little drunk and a lot tired and just enough himself—gives her a startled look, flushes. "No!" he exclaims, and starts off towards grad student housing, ruffled. 

 Behind him, Anna calls, "Don't worry! He's saving it for the second one!"  


End file.
